Voters still back Obama

Did you hear that this week would determine the fate of Barack Obama’s first term? Or was it next week? The political and media establishment has clearly decided that Obama’s presidency is “in trouble.” Even before Obama’s address to Congress was announced, the chattering class decreed that the White House “lost” August to testy town halls. Now, we’re told, the president must save health care reform to save himself.

The “honeymoon” is over, according to The New York Times, and Obama is now under pressure to “jump-start his struggling presidency.” The same Times article, however, featured a graph revealing that Obama is actually polling better than President George W. Bush and President Bill Clinton did at the same point in their first terms. (Oops.)

While Washington has played up Obama’s 6-point dip in public approval, the president still has most voters’ support. In fact, not only is Obama beating Republicans and Congress at large, his approval ratings also top his share of the electorate from the November election. Add in the greatest financial panic in over a generation, and the sustained public support for the president is actually quite remarkable.

That conclusion simply requires a look at the numbers.

Washington is not, however, a reality-based community. It is a media-based community. And the media have not been very interested in reporting that the electorate still backs Obama.

The Post’s headline, however, told a different story: “Faith in Obama Drops as Reform Fear Rises.”

The Post’s coverage downplayed overall approval ratings — the long-standing presidential metric — to focus on a drop in the share of voters who are confident that Obama “will make the right decisions for the country.” As blogger Eric Boehlert has documented, this type of poll contortion is necessary when the narrative is pre-scripted to highlight Obama’s troubles.

After Obama’s hit health care speech, of course, many pundits rushed to herald a comeback. Within a few hours, CNN’s headline read: “Double-Digit Post-Speech Jump for Obama Plan.”

Thus our shampoo media cycle continues: Rinse, reverse and repeat.

The reality is far less erratic. Despite the sagging economy and open, legitimate questions about health care reform, Obama has steady, slightly decreasing job approval ratings. Independents are also standing by him, with 48 percent backing his performance in the latest Gallup Poll.

To be sure, all the political heat on health care has prioritized the issue for many Americans. While only 7 percent of the public said it was the most important problem facing the country in April, now 26 percent of Americans rank it No. 1. (About 29 percent say the economy, in the same Gallup Poll.)

Yet while pundits and politicos strain to tie Obama’s prospects to the latest news cycle, voters seem far less jumpy. Maybe it’s because they’re less addicted to Black­Berrys and Twitter. Maybe it’s because they’re too busy working — or looking for work — to follow every procedural setback in Congress. Or maybe it’s because they have a sense of perspective about the job Obama is actually doing — that it’s bigger than any single issue, and real recovery and reform take much longer than a news cycle.